In a post to Twitter, Mike Puma of the New York Post quoted Sandy Alderson as saying, “I definitely would hate to give up a Dickey or Niese or Gee, but it is our strength and probably something we have to entertain.”

Michael Baron, Contributor

He’s right on both fronts. It’s always difficult to trade away from starting pitching to acquire position players, especially when starting pitching has become a strength, and is only growing stronger with time. The thought of R.A Dickey, Jon Niese, Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler can potentially be dominating for a long time, and starting pitching is the core of winning championships.

Unfortunately for the Mets, in terms of certainty, this is about all they have aside from David Wright and maybe both Ruben Tejada and Ike Davis. In fact, they don’t have any other players who can be considered everyday players right now, and it’s debateable whether some of them should be on the roster at all.

This goes back to my point about trading Dickey. They have to evaluate what any deal for a starting pitcher does for the health of the organization. The Mets really aren’t in a position to be choosy – they appear to have not only an area of strength but an area of excess with their starting pitching, and while it’s difficult to be 100 percent comfortable with the notion of dealing from this supply, it makes a ton of baseball sense to at least explore the option so to fill one or more needs on the diamond. The options for the team (and most teams) are not that appealing on the free agent market, and are only going to get less appealing in future free agent markets. It remains to be seen whether or not such opportunities present themselves, but it’s the one, and maybe only area they can barter from.